Israel is often portrayed by its detractors as excessively dominated by its fundamentalist extremes. Of course this ignores the fact that most Israelis are more secular than most Americans. But it also ignores the fact that even among the more orthodox Jews, practical considerations can trump ideology. Some time back I wrote about a program on TLC called "Shalom in the Home," where an orthodox Rabbi, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, goes around the country doing family counseling, often with considerable success, even among the goyim (non-Jews).

One of the last episodes aired was a very daring one where the Rabbi counseled a lesbian couple in my own neighborhood (Park Slope). I reviewed that episode here. The couple had adopted a child and were having problems. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach used the program to advocate for tolerance, insisting that whatever his personal views were regarding gays, the family he was counseling WAS a family and deserved just as much consideration as a family whose lifestyle he might be more approving of. Love and the needs of the child were the primary concern, not ideology.

But that is one Rabbi and an American one at that. Yet Israel, despite the influence of ultra-Orthodox political parties, in many ways remains more secular than America has ever been.

Today the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled that the Interior Ministry must recognise both members of a lesbian couple as the mothers of a baby.

It is sad that this is even a question, but it is progress.

Homosexuality has not been a punishable offence in the Jewish state since 1988. It remains one at the Federal level in the US, technically, though this is only enforced in regards to military service. However homosexuality, under the term "sodomy," remains in America grounds to bar someone from Federal employment. Several US states still officially ban homosexuality, though a 2003 US Supreme Court decision invalidated such State level laws. So, in this sense, Israeli law was ahead of ours.

Israeli law has recognised homosexual unions for legal property and inheritance rights since 2004.

In 2006, the Israeli Health Ministry allowed a lesbian couple to form a legal "family unit" when one give birth to a common child created from the fertilized egg of one woman and implanted into the womb of her partner. However, the details remained ambiguous and both women had to undergo adoption procedures to be considered a parent of the child. (I am reminded of the Orthodox reaction to the uncertain status of Ethiopian Jews: the ambiguity was "solved" by secretly conducting a ceremony to "convet" them en masse...something that the Ethiopian Jews rightly considered insulting, but it conveniently solved any legal ambiguity in their status).

Today's decision allows both members of a lesbian couple to officially be registered as a mother of a child by the Interior Ministry, whether that child is adopted or is the natural child of one of the lesbian mothers.

Progress can be slow, but it is progress.